


the thought of you stays bright

by felicities



Category: Actor RPF, Broadway RPF, Wicked - All Media Types, Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman, Wicked RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-24 08:57:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13807872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felicities/pseuds/felicities
Summary: Kristin receives a gift.





	the thought of you stays bright

“Good morning, K,” Seph says, placing a small, square package in front of Kristin during breakfast.

 

“What’s this?”

 

“I don’t know,” he says, but everything about his face seems to indicate otherwise. He shrugs, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips, and disappears into the living room. “Sirius Radio at 10, Kristi.”

 

“Seph! Who is this from?” she tries, but he doesn’t reply and so she’s left with the small, square package in front of her.

 

Of course, Kristin has her suspicions.

 

But that’s impossible.

 

 _She_ wouldn’t.

 

 _She_ , who is to be married in a year. _She_ , who called Kristin personally just to inform her about the engagement, and how unbearably awkward that conversation was—well, that is, when it stopped being unbearably devastating. _She_ , who emailed a few weeks ago and told Kristin that she’d be receiving a little _something_.

 

This is the little something, isn’t it?

 

Kristin rips the wrapping paper and her suspicion is confirmed almost instantly. “idina.,” the front cover says, in big, bold type. Album art has been foregone, and it’s just a CD inside, encased in transparent plastic.

 

She opens it with shaky hands, detaching the CD from the little hook in the middle and a post-it falls out. _Of course_. It is green and slightly crumpled, the scrawl illegible and unmistakably Idina’s.

“Here it is!

I hope I make you proud.

xo”

Kristin sets it down, her heartbeat escalating. Idina has gifted her the opportunity to hear everything before everyone else does, and it makes it difficult to breathe.

 

She chugs her morning coffee and avoids the piece of plastic for most of the day. She tosses it into the top drawer of her bedside table and goes about her appointments, throwing herself into work, until she forgets about Idina and the album and the songs—a damn near impossible task, considering she has songs about the lady of the hour on her own fucking record.

 

Damn it.

 

When she gets back home after a long day, she almost collapses into bed, exhaustion enveloping her. She sinks deeper into her covers, and tries to sleep.

 

Kristin is bone-tired and weary, but her mind is running and racing and refusing to let her rest. She must’ve spent an hour or two tossing and turning before she considers hiding her phone and asking Seph where he keeps her Ambien pills, but she decides against it.

 

She rolls out of bed, instead, and retrieves Idina’s CD from her bedside table. She breathes in, deeply, and loads it into her stereo. Here it is, indeed.

 

Idina’s voice stirs something in her. Over the years she’s become an expert at managing to avoid hearing it—a difficult feat back in 2013, when the damned Frozen song was everywhere. But there was a time when all she wanted was Idina’s voice in her ears: raspy, throaty, warm, despite being the subject of many of their fights. (“You’re gonna damage your voice, Dee. You have to take care of it better,” “Stop fucking screlting,” “I’m a singer, not a screamer, unlike you”—all uttered, of course, by none other than the great Chenoweth herself.)

 

But she has always, always, always loved Idina’s voice from the moment she saw her in Rent, from their first chemistry read, from their first rehearsal, their first show, their last. It had pained her to reach a point in her life when she could no longer bear to hear Idina’s voice. She’s proud of Idina and how far she’s come. Kristin has always known that she was destined for great things, and here she is now. The bridge of “Like Lightning” comes on (“ _I wanna know, am I gonna turn out alright?_ ”) and Kristin finally stops holding back the tears.

 

They leak unbidden, streaming down her cheeks, and she’s heaving and sobbing so inconsolably. A sight to see, she’s sure of it. She recognises bits and pieces from “Everybody Knows” and “Show Me”—fights and words and throwaway sentences making their way into Idina’s lyrics. “Last Time” begins to play and Kristin is so red-faced and so out of breath from crying and she hits pause so forcefully that the picture frames resting atop her stereo fall to the ground. She barely makes it through the next two songs, a thankful and much-needed reprieve from the last thirty minutes of resurfacing guilt and regret.

 

But it’s nothing—nothing at all—compared to when she gets to the tenth track. She feels her heart seize up inside her chest and she can’t breathe and she’s crying again, and again and again and again and it hurts, all of it, everything she’s shared with Idina and all the things she didn’t, and all the things she never will. Twelve years can’t erase their past and twelve years, with more piling on, won’t ever change how she feels about Idina. She loved Idina, and Idina loved her, and Kristin threw it all away.

 

And so at 3 am, on September 22nd, she sends Mary-Mitchell an email. 

 

> SUBJECT: always on my mind/losing my mind medley
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> K

 

In her concerts, she’ll tell the audience that at 3 am, Willie Nelson and Stephen Sondheim together sounded like a good idea. What she won’t tell them is that at 3 am, it also sounded like a good idea to call her former co-star and former something to tell her to break off her engagement, to come back to her, to tell her how massively she screwed up twelve years ago and almost every other year in between then and now.

 

But of course, she doesn’t. She’s not brave enough, and she doesn’t think she ever will be. So for the time being, she thinks: this medley will have to do. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from _losing my mind_ by stephen sondheim. my favourite rendition, on its own, is marin mazzie's. but kristin's version of it, mashed up with _always on my mind_ is something else.


End file.
